Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Members and supporters of the activist group CODEPINK dress in orange jumpsuits during a protest outside the National Defense University, where US President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak about his administration's counter terrorism policy, including the thorny issues of drone strikes and the future of the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, in Washington, DC.

By Crystal Park

WASHINGTON (VOR) – Two members of the terrorist group al-Shabab have been killed by a U.S. military strike in Somalia.

It's a sign of growing U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the region. Earlier in October, the U.S. Navy SEALS conducted a raid in Somali to take down a Kenyan al-Shabab member.After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.S. is evolving the way it fights terrorism. Instead of boots on the ground, targeted drone strikes are becoming the preferred method.However, Dr. James Dorsey, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, says although the U.S. prefers drone strikes because they're "cleaner" than boots on the ground, the drones present several problems."The problem with the drone strikes is that at times civilians or people not associated with the targets are among the casualties. The second thing is it really doesn't take into account what the facts on the ground are, what tribal relationships are. So often what these strikes do is they do take out a target...but at the same time, they could aggravate tensions on the ground, and have long-term consequences.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Opponents of Qatar’s foreign, sports and labor policies are
striking at the Gulf state’s commercial interests in a bid to either force it
to embrace reform or punish it for its support of Islamist groups.

Britain’s powerful GMB trade union called this week on
British construction companies active in Qatar and particularly those bidding
for 2022 World Cup-related projects not to exploit cheap migrant labor that has
become a focal point of controversy over the Gulf state’s hosting of the one of
the world’s foremost sporting events.

World soccer body FIFA was forced earlier this month to take
the living and working conditions of migrant workers, who constitute a majority
of Qatar’s population and 94 percent of its workforce, into consideration in
its deliberations over whether to move the Cup from summer to winter because of
the Gulf state’s extreme summer temperatures.

In a letter to the chief executive officers of 13 British
companies, GMB international officer Bert Schouwenberg requested a meeting to
discuss the issue. The companies on Mr. Schouwenberg’s list included the
construction manager of London's Shard skyscraper, Mace, Heathrow Terminal Five
builder Laing O' Rourke, FTSE 250 group Kier, Balfour Beatty which is advising
Qatar on a $1 billion highways project and Interserve that was awarded $100
million worth of contracts to help the Gulf state exploit of its vast natural
gas reserves.

“We believe that UK companies have a particular
responsibility to ensure that their Qatar-based employees, regardless of their
nationality, and their sub-contractors' employees enjoy terms and conditions
within globally accepted standards of 'decent work' as laid down by organizations
such as the International Labor Organization," Mr. Schouwenberg wrote. He
charged that workers in Qatar "face quite appalling conditions, are treated
little better than slaves and live in unacceptable squalid accommodation".

The GMB move is part of a campaign by the International
Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to deprive Qatar of its World Cup hosting
rights if it fails to improve working and living conditions and abolish its
kafala sponsorship system which makes workers beholden to their employers.

British and other foreign contractors targeted by the unions
are likely to point to the fact that on paper Qatari rules and regulations
guarantee a host of workers’ rights in terms of working and living conditions
but not the more politically loaded ones such as the right to form independent
unions and bargain collectively. The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, which is
responsible for organizing the World Cup, as well as Qatar Foundation have this
year adopted charters that go beyond Qatari law in recognizing workers’ rights.

In practice, Qatar has however lagged in implementing and
enforcing its rules and regulations. The Qatar labor ministry admitted as much
earlier this month when it pledged to significantly tighten oversight and
increase the number of inspectors.

Qatar’s efforts to comply with calls for improved material
conditions in a bid to resolve the issue and fend off the unions’ more
political demands which touch on the viability of a tiny minority of nationals to
retain absolute control of a country in which the vast majority of its
residents have no rights and are essentially viewed as guest workers are
undermined by high profile labor disputes involving international soccer players.

In the latest incident, French-Algerian international Zahir
Belounis, was advised earlier this month that he could leave Qatar after being
banned from travelling for two years because of a dispute with his club, Al
Jaish, which is owned by the Qatari military. To leave, however, he would have
to sign a statement that would effectively force him to forgo two years of
outstanding salary payments.

Qatar’s inter-meshed commercial and political interests are
also under attack in Egypt where the toppling in July of the elected Qatar-backed
Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsi has soured relations
between Mr. Morsi’s military backed successors and the Gulf state. The Egyptian
Radio and Television Union, which controls state-owned broadcasters,
effectively abrogated an agreement under which Al Jazeera, the state-owned
Qatari television network, had bought the exclusive rights to African soccer
championship matches.

“We will not observe the rights of Al Jazeera or abide by
any judiciary provisions issued in its favor, since it has not respected the
decision of Egyptian judiciary system and continued the activities of Al
Jazeera Live Egypt in Egypt. This will not be limited to the Ghana-Egypt game,
but will also include any game the Egyptian television wishes to broadcast. No
one will be able to stop us,” said the union’s head, Essam al-Amir.

Mr. Al-Amir was referring to the banning of Al Jazeera’s
local affiliate because of its alleged support for the Brotherhood. Al Jazeera
has vowed to sue the union for its broadcasting of a recent African
championship match between Egypt and Ghana in violation of the Qatari
broadcaster’s rights to the game. Qatar’s troubled relations with Algeria were
reflected in a similar dispute after Algerian television broadcast a match of
its national team against Burkina Faso in violation of Al Jazeera’s rights.

Egypt last month, in a further indication of souring
relations, returned to Qatar $2 billion after the two countries failed to agree
on terms to convert the Qatari deposit in the Egyptian central bank into a
bond.

Qatar’s efforts to use sports as a pillar of its soft power
and a key building block in its foreign, defense and security policy in the
absence of the ability to create the hard power it would need to defend itself
are further undermined by perceptions that it is backing jihadist groups in the
civil war in Syria. “Qatar, noted for its ‘hyperactive’ foreign policy, is so
eager to acquire clients in the region that it has shown little concern for
these groups’ intensely Islamist principles,” said Foundation for Defense of
Democracies senior fellow David Andrew Weinberg in a recent CNN commentary.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Militant, street battle-hardened soccer fans played a key
role in toppling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and resisting the military
rulers who succeeded him. Almost three years later and four months after the
military removed from office Egypt’s first democratically elected president,
the stage appears to be set for renewed confrontations with the fans, one of
the country’s largest civic groups.

The potential for confrontation is compounded by Egypt’s 6:1
loss earlier this month of a crucial 2014 World Cup qualifier against Ghana.
Opposition forces and supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi, a leader
of the Muslim Brotherhood, blame Egypt’s defeat on military strongman General Abdel
Fatah al-Sisi. "You jinxed us, el-Sisi," said Mohammed Dardeer on
Facebook, describing the general as "religiously defiled" in a
comment reminiscent of perceptions in Iran that blamed the Islamic republic’s
soccer failures on the intense interest in the game displayed by former
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ghana defeated Egypt at a time that the country is deeply
divided between supporters and opponents of the military that deposed President
Mohamed Morsi and brutally cracked down on his Brotherhood. The coup prompted
many of the military’s opponents to view the national team as representing the
regime rather than the country much as militant soccer fans did under Mubarak.
That earned them charges of being traitors by those who see the Brotherhood
rather than the military as the greatest obstacle to resolving Egypt’s
political crisis.

“When a large number of Egyptians, too many to be ignored,
felt happy after our national team lost to Ghana, didn't the coup organizers
ask themselves why they felt this way towards their national team? They most
likely will not bother themselves to think about it, but will claim naively, ‘It
is out of spite so that no victories, not even in football, will be attributed
to General Al-Sisi… Al-Sisi's Egypt is
no longer the Egypt of love that celebrates victories, as tyranny and injustice
cannot win; they are defeated in every aspect, whether militarily, as in 1967
(Israel’s defeat of Egypt), or on the sports field. It is ironic that one of
the coup leaders called the football result a catastrophe, which was what the
1967 defeat was called.” quipped Amira Abo el-Fetouh in the Middle East
Monitor.

Ghana’s stunning thrashing of Egypt did persuade the
military to allow some 30,000 fans to attend the return match in an out-of-the-way
Cairo stadium scheduled for November 19 despite a ban on spectators in stadia
designed to avert political protests. The symbolism of Egypt’s performance –
victory or defeat – in the return match weighs heavy on the game given the
regime’s need to project itself more positively internationally and to counter
the analogy of defeats on the military and the soccer battlefields. The
symbolism is all the greater with General Al-Sisi also celebrating his birthday
on November 19.

The government’s decision to open the World Cup qualifier to
spectators prompted Mohammed Yussef, the manager of storied Cairo club Al Ahli
SC, to demand that fans also be allowed to attend the team’s African
Championship match in Cairo on November 9 against South Africa's Orlando
Pirates. Al Ahli fans are among Egypt’s most militant and have been in the
frontlines of the country’s major protests in recent years. "We need fans
to attend this very important match. Ahli is battling for the reputation of
Egyptian football," Mr. Yussef said in a reference to the Ghanaian
humiliation of the Egyptian national team.

But even without politics intruding on Egypt’s struggle to
qualify for next year’s Cup in Brazil, potential flashpoints for confrontations
with militant soccer fans are emerging. A court in the Suez Canal city of Port
Said this week postponed until December the retrial of 11 militant supporters
of Al Masri SC sentenced for premeditated murder to jail terms ranging from 15
years to life for their role in last year’s politically loaded brawl in which
74 members of Al Ahli were killed. Last year’s sentencing to death of 21 of
their colleagues sparked an uprising in Port Said and other Suez Canal cities.
If the sentences against the 11 are upheld, renewed protests are likely. By the
same token, a reversal could spark protests in Cairo by Al Ahli supporters.

Police last week used to tear gas to disperse hundreds of Al
Ahli supporters wearing their signature red T-shirts inscribed with the words:
“Ultras are not criminals.” The fans were protesting the arrest of 25 of their
colleagues who allegedly had tried to storm a Cairo airport terminal as the
club’s handball team returned from Morocco. A member of the Ultras White
Knights, the militant support group of Al Ahli Cairo rival Al Zamalek SC, was
killed by security forces earlier this month, when the group tried to storm the
club’s headquarters demanding the resignation of its president.

Youth groups and soccer fans have warned that a draft
protest law approved by the military-backed government that is currently being
reviewed by interim president Adly Mansour paves the way for the return of the
police state they had sought to destroy with the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak. The
law gives security forces rather than the judiciary the right to cancel or
postpone a planned protest or change its location. It obliges organizers to
provide authorities in advance details of the planned protest, including the
identity of the organizers and their demand. It further bans protests in within
a 100 meter radius of government buildings.

In a statement, the April 6 youth movement warned: “Time
will not go back to the era of rulers issuing laws to silence their opponents."

James M. Dorsey
is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director
of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog as well as a forthcoming book with the
same title.

On October 15, James Dorsey, a syndicated columnist and author of the blog (and
forthcoming book) "The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer," addressed
a Washington Institute Policy Forum. The following is a rapporteur's summary of
his remarks.

******************************

Over the past several years, soccer fields across the Middle East and North
Africa have become battlegrounds for political, gender, and labor rights, as
well as issues of national, ideological, and ethnic identity. Examining the
recent and historical role of militant soccer fans in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, and
other countries can help shed light on where each society stands on these issues
today.

Most soccer clubs in the region were established with some kind of political or
ideological leaning, whether pro-colonial, pro-monarchy, nationalist, or other.
In Egypt, two such clubs have had tremendous influence -- al-Ahly and Zamalek.
The former was home to students who later became revolutionaries; President
Gamal Abdul Nasser himself eventually led the club. In contrast, Zamalek was
associated with pro-monarchy and pro-colonial movements. Today, the demography
of the two fan bases has hardly changed. For example, celebrated Egyptian
player Ibrahim Hassan described Zamalek as the "King's Club" in a
2010 interview, despite being born years after the overthrow of Egypt's last
monarch.

The soccer pitch can also be a barometer of future events. In Jordan,
statements openly critical of the royal family's corruption first gained
notoriety on the soccer field. And at Saudi soccer matches, many princes are
booed, pelted with various objects, and sometimes forced off the pitch
entirely. Last year's removal of the head of the Saudi Arabian Football
Federation was perhaps the first time a royal family member was forced to
resign from a post due to public pressure.

Although soccer players themselves rarely engage in political protests, the
sport evokes the kind of emotion that can spark such actions. In Iran, Tabriz's
main soccer club has been a major symbol of Azerbaijani ethnic identity; most
recently, it was the driving force behind demonstrations demanding
reunification of Iran's East Azerbaijan province and the former Soviet republic
of Azerbaijan. In Tehran, a ceremony held to commemorate deceased player Nasser
Hejazi, who had been openly critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, turned
into a mass antigovernment demonstration. Moreover, Iran's presidential
elections often fall around the same time as its final World Cup qualifying
matches; in some cases, celebrations of national team victories have led
citizens to break social codes and hold antiregime protests.

Jihadist and theological leaders in the region look to soccer as a rallying
tool well. Many Islamist mosques are affiliated with specific clubs, and
militant figures such as Usama bin Laden, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,
and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh understand the role that the sport has played
in recruiting followers and facilitating bonds between those who later carry
out violence. At the same time, strong disagreement persists between hardline
Islamist groups as to whether soccer is sanctioned under religious law. On one
hand, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood considered forming its own club in 2011, while
Hezbollah and other groups own and operate teams in Lebanon. On the other hand,
the Somali group al-Shabab has been known to execute people just for watching
soccer matches.

The sport has also been an important battleground for women's rights. Saha
al-Hawari, the daughter of an Egyptian referee, worked to break down regional
opposition to women's soccer by convincing families, clubs, and governments to
allow women to organize their own teams. She also partnered with Jordan's
Prince Ali in convincing the member states of the West Asian Football
Federation to declare that women had an equal right to pursue soccer as a
career.

RISE OF THE ULTRAS IN EGYPT

Around 2004-2006, passionate soccer fans in the Middle East connected with
like-minded groups around the world who embraced absolute commitment to their
clubs. These fans, called Ultras, saw players and coaches as opportunistic or
corrupt; this and other factors spurred them to develop an especially strong
sense of ownership over their clubs.

The growing influence of the Ultras challenged the power of some regimes, but
also presented them with opportunities. Leaders such as Ahmadinejad, former
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine
Ben Ali sought close public association with national teams in order to harness
their massive popularity. Mubarak in particular used the sport to deflect
attention from government mismanagement and manipulate national emotions.

Meanwhile, Egypt's Ultras defiantly claimed ownership over their clubs, and by
2007, they were clashing with security forces on a weekly basis, whether at the
stadium or elsewhere. By 2011, they represented tens of thousands of
undereducated, unemployed young men who resented the regime and saw an
opportunity to respond. Once the revolution began, Ultras played a key role in
breaking the barrier of fear for the masses -- they approached Egyptians who
had never spoken out against the government, brought them to demonstrations in
Tahrir Square, and pressured them to remain once security forces cracked down.

Following Mubarak's ouster, the Ultras lost much of their public influence. Yet
the February 2012 stadium brawl that killed seventy-four in Port Said reignited
empathy toward the Ultras, sparking revolts in cities along the Red Sea and
Suez Canal.

QATAR'S WORLD CUP CONTROVERSY

While other nations tend to bid on hosting the World Cup in order to project
influence, create opportunities for their citizens, and improve infrastructure,
Qatar's focus in seeking the 2022 Cup was security. After Iraq's 1990 invasion
of Kuwait, Qatar learned that it could not rely on the Saudi defense umbrella.
And despite importing massive amounts of weapons and foreign personnel to staff
its armed forces, the small emirate still lacks the hard power needed to defend
itself. Soccer therefore represents a valuable soft-power tool and a boon to
national security.

Yet Doha's successful World Cup campaign has been subjected to intense
scrutiny. Although the country has major domestic issues, especially regarding
labor, much of the controversy surrounding its bid has stemmed from envy and
prejudice. Qataris did not expect the deluge of criticism they have received.
After all, many in the international community remained silent for years
regarding concerns about foreign workers in Qatar; powerful international trade
federations did not truly assert themselves until after the country's bid
gained momentum. In any case, the emirate is attempting to address these labor
concerns, partnering with source countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to
make sure migrants are not being exploited by middlemen.

Meanwhile, dismal attendance in Qatari soccer stadiums has prompted discussion
of reform. Knowing that they are only temporary residents, the country's
numerous foreign workers are less likely to become passionate fans, and many
citizens are uninterested in supporting government-owned soccer clubs. This has
spurred talk of transferring ownership from the state to publicly held
companies. More broadly, the Qatari government is perhaps the first to try
building a complete sports industry -- including sports medicine and sports
security -- from the ground up. In doing so, it has tied sports to the
emirate's burgeoning national identity.

The reforms being contemplated in Qatar may eventually spread to other Persian
Gulf states with similarly unsustainable demographic challenges. For now,
though, soccer's role in the Gulf will continue to create controversy. For
example, FIFA may have erred in appointing Bahrain's Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim
al-Khalifa as president of the Asian Football Confederation despite his
crackdown on athletes who participated in antigovernment protests. Yet there
were really no good alternatives for the position.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Sectarian divisions fuelling conflict across the Middle East
have spilt on to the soccer pitch with Iraq’s decision to boycott the Gulf Cup
and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) warning the Iraqi government not to
interfere in the game.

It is hard to separate the divisions between Sunni and
Shiite Muslims that governments in Bahrain and Syria have used to counter
popular uprisings and that Saudi Arabia employs to stem the region’s tidal wave
of discontent and counter Iran in a struggle for regional hegemony from the
soccer spat that has erupted in recent days.

Relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia have been strained
ever since Iraq’s Shiite majority gained power after the 2003 overthrow of
Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni rule. Saudi Arabia accuses Iraq of maintaining
close ties to Iran and supporting the embattled government of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad. Bahrain charges that Iran instigated the popular uprising on
the island in 2011 that was brutally squashed by its Sunni minority rulers with
the help of the kingdom.

Politics have further been embedded in the tournament’s
Arabic name Kaas El Khaleej El Arabi or Arabian Gulf Cup to counter Iran’s
identification of the region as the Persian Gulf. In a spat in July, the
Iranian football federation, whose own top league, the Persian Gulf League,
adheres to the Islamic republic’s position in the war of semantics, responded
sharply to the UAE renaming its premier league as the Arabian Gulf League. The
Iranians blocked the transfer of Iranian players to UAE clubs and broke the
contracts of those who had already moved.

World soccer body FIFA vice president and AFC executive
committee member Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan referred to the war of
words earlier this week by stressing “that it is crucial for FIFA, which
comprises more than 200 richly diverse members, to be mindful and respectful of
cultural sensitivities. Respect of other cultures is indeed one of the core
values of our beautiful game,” Prince Ali said. His remarks came after FIFA referred
to the Gulf on its website as the Persian Gulf in what Prince Ali called a
“misunderstanding.”

The prince went a step further by saying “that it is about
time FIFA embrace the Arabic language as an official language, spoken by more
than 300 million people in twenty-two Arab countries; all of which are members
of the football governing body.”

To be sure, soccer associations in the Saudi-led Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman
alongside the kingdom stand on solid ground in arguing that they moved the Gulf
Cup scheduled for late next year or early 2015 in which Iraq and Yemen also
compete from the southern Iraqi city of Basra to Jeddah for security reasons.
Iraq has in recent months been rocked by a series of suicide attacks and
bombings reminiscent of the sectarian violence several years ago. Similarly,
Iraq has a history of political interference in the affairs of the Iraqi
Football Association (IFA).

In addition
to security concerns, the GCC based its decision on assertions that Iraq had
failed to complete the necessary infrastructure for the Cup. In announcing its
boycott of the Cup, which is widely popular in the Gulf and fiercely contested,
Iraq said it had poured a huge sum of money into preparing for the tournament.
It pointed out that Gulf states had agreed in 2007 to hold it in Basra, at a
time when the security situation was worse than it is now.

"It has
become manifestly clear that the reason for moving the (tournament) from Basra
to Jeddah is political and taken under intense pressure from Saudi. Saudi
Arabia and others are conspiring behind closed doors against Iraq and the
sports (of Iraq)," the Iraqi youth and sport ministry said. In his weekly television address, Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri A-Maliki charged that the deprival of Iraq of its right to host
the Cup was "prejudiced against the rights of the Iraqi people."

The AFC’s
statement was prompted by the fact that it was the Iraqi government rather than
the IFA that announced Iraq’s boycott of the Cup. The AFC said that it had
asked the IFA to explain alleged government involvement in the association’s
decision to boycott.

The request
is ironic in a part of the world in which soccer, including AFC President
Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa’s ’s own association, is controlled by
ruling elites and serves to reinforce the political grip of regimes and prevent
the pitch from becoming a rallying point for dissent. A member of the Bahraini
ruling family, Sheikh Salman, has refused to stand up for national team soccer
players who were denounced, arrested and tortured for participating in the
peaceful anti-government protests.

The AFC said
neither it nor FIFA would tolerate government interference. "It's the
right of the Iraq Football Association to decide on the interest of their team,
fans and other stakeholders. The government should not interfere in the
football affairs,” the AFC said, adding that it was asking the government “to
stay away in the interest of Iraqi football."

The AFC
statement followed comments by Prince Ali criticizing FIFA for banning Iraq
from hosting matches. FIFA reinstated the ban in July because of the increased
violence after lifting it in March. The Gulf Cup is not bound by FIFA decisions
given that the world body does not recognize the tournament.

Prince Ali
said the ban was unfair because other countries facing similar problems were
allowed to play at home. This year’s Gulf Cup that was also supposed to be
hosted by Iraq was moved to Bahrain.

“I would
like to emphasize that Iraq should be able to host friendly matches, whether in
the South or the North. There are other countries facing similar issues but are
given the green light, there is no reason to exclude Iraq at this point,”
Prince Ali said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Financially stressed Turkish soccer clubs are becoming pawns
in the political struggle between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
militant soccer fans who rank prominently among his detractors as soccer pitches
and university campuses emerge as major battlefields between the government and
its detractors.

Critics of Mr. Erdogan charge that the prime minister is
seeking to enlist clubs in much the same carrot-and-stick way that he tamed the
media by exploiting financial vulnerabilities and turning Turkey alongside Iran
and China into the country with the most journalists behind bars. The impact of
Mr. Erdogan’s effort to restrict media independence and limit independent
critical reporting was evident when last June television stations broadcast soap
operas and penguins instead of pictures of mass anti-government protests on
Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square in which soccer fans played a prominent role.

Soccer may however be a tougher nut to crack than the media.
Soccer unlike the media has militant fans determined to thwart Mr. Erdogan’s
attempts to use troubled clubs to whip them into line. Fans have defied a
recent government ban on the chanting of political slogans during matches,
rejected attempts by clubs on instructions of the government to sign pledges to
abide by the ban, and ridiculed a government public relations campaign that
portrays peaceful protest as a precursor for suicide bombings.

The government has taken similar steps to pacify university
campuses, including cancelling scholarships for students who had participated
in the anti-government protests sparked by plans to replace Taksim’s historic
Gezi Park with a shopping mall. Turkish authorities recently arrested 25
students aged 13-19 who visited Iran on suspicion of espionage and propaganda
activities. While the arrests reflected tense Turkish-Iranian relations over
Syria, it occurred amid a campaign to deter anti-government activity among
students.

“They can try Gezi protests in universities. People should
not ruin their lives, should not have criminal records,” Turkish sports
minister Suat Kilic warned last month in an ironic twist given that Turkey with
its history of military coups and the Erdogan government’s crackdown on the
media has scores of intellectuals and journalists with police records. Among
those is Mr. Erdogan himself, who spent four months in prison in the 1990s for
reciting a controversial poem.

Mr. Erdogan’s ability to whip clubs into line and employ
them in his confrontation with soccer fans has been enhanced by the debt burden
under which Turkish teams are laboring. Bloomberg
News quoted the Istanbul stock exchange as saying that short-term
borrowings of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK, its Istanbul rival and Turkish
champion Galatasary SC and Black Sea club Trabzonspor FC created “uncertainty
over the sustainability” of their finances. The bourse said that shareholders’
equity for each was negative.

Galatasaray is staring at $57 million of debt due in the
next year as the result of the expensive acquisition of players like Didier Drogba
and hiring of Coach Roberto Mancini. Even so Galatasary with a debt-to-cash
ratio of 13:1 compares favorably to Trabzonspor’s ratio of 40:1 and Besiktas’
24:1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“If Turkish soccer isn’t reformed, institutionalized and if
all goes as it has so far, Turkish soccer is doomed to hit a wall,” said soccer
economist and journalist Tugrul Aksar.

The battle over freedom of expression on the pitch was being
waged as Mr. Erdogan unveiled what he termed a historic democracy package that granted
greater liberties but fell short of the expectations of liberals, Kurds and
Orthodox Christians and seemed to run counter to concepts put forward by
President Abdullah Gul, a co-founder of the prime minister’s ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP).

Mr. Gul, who is gunning for the prime minister’s job, has in
recent days voiced far more liberal and inclusive concepts of democracy than
the majoritarian ones advocated by Mr. Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan, who has promised
not to seek a fourth term as prime minister after leading the AKP to three
sweeping electoral victories, is expected to run next summer for the presidency.
Many analysts suspect however that he may only keep his promise if he can turn
the largely ceremonial office into an executive one.

The battle for greater freedoms also occurs as Turkey braced
itself for next week’s European Union progress report that was expected to take
the government to task for its hard-handed handling of the Gezi Park protests,
limits on the freedom of expression and freedom of press, and the deceleration
of its reform process.

In a twist of irony, anthropologist Elif Babül argues
however that EU programs designed to bring the Turkish police in line with
European standards have served to enhance law enforcement’s capabilities and
better package rather than reduce its disproportionate use of force. The brutal
response of the police to the Gezi Park demonstrations turned a small
environmental protest into mass anti-government protests with thousands of
militant soccer fans on the frontline. Ms. Babül’s somber analysis suggests
that violence is inevitable in future confrontations between the government and
street-battle hardened soccer fans determined to stand their ground.

“My research on human rights training programs for Turkish
state officials has taught me that the meetings and workshops organized to
improve the capacity of Turkey to become a member of the EU are far from
unproductive, useless sites of whitewashing that help the government continue
business as usual. On the contrary, these workshops, projects, and other tools
of harmonization actually serve as platforms for government actors to manage
the terms of EU membership, and the governmental standards that they entail,”
Ms. Babül wrote.

“It is by conducting projects that state officials come to
learn what these standards are really about. They are place-holders for
democracy and the rule of law that are supposed to be managed strategically in
order to reduce liability and perform a level of development. For instance, it
is by interacting with the British police at experience-sharing meetings that
the TNP officers learn what it takes to become ‘security experts,’” she went on
to say.

“Rather than installing mechanisms to fight impunity within
the organization, they learn that what they need is “better policing” that can
be attained by building crime databases or by setting up high-tech labs to
better conduct forensic investigation… Scholars who are critical of
democratization and development industries have shown that programs for
economic and political transition continue to produce unexpected outcomes in a
variety of places, leading to more accentuated forms of exclusion, inequality,
and authoritarianism. The contradictions between the stated goals and actual
outcomes of these projects are inherent to the world of development,” Ms. Babül
cautioned.

A just published Amnesty
International report concluded that the brutal suppression of the Gezi Park
protests and with it the subsequent government campaign against militant soccer
fans “significantly undermined the
claims of the ruling Justice and Development Party to be delivering
responsible, rights-respecting government and exposed a striking intolerance of
opposing voices. The smashing of the Gezi Park protest movement has involved a
string of human rights violations – many of them on a huge scale. These
include: the wholesale denial of the right to peaceful assembly and violations
of the rights to life, liberty and the freedom from torture and other
ill-treatment. The vast majority of police abuses already look likely to go
unpunished, while many of those who organized and participated in the protests
have been vilified, abused – and now face prosecution on unfair or inflated
charges.”

Among those facing allegedly unfair or inflated charges are
20 members of Carsi, the popular support group of Besiktas who stand accused of
being members of an illegal organization. Carsi’s reply in defiance of the ban
on political slogans has been to chant "everywhere is Taksim, everywhere
is resistance" during matches echoing a popular June protest tune.

James M. Dorsey
is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer
blog.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Militant Egyptian soccer fans, a key player in Egypt’s
almost three year-old political rollercoaster, are fighting a battle for their
existence in the shadow of the military’s campaign to repress the Muslim
Brotherhood. At the core of the battle is the military’s desire to crack down
on one of the country’s largest civic groups and assert control of stadia in
advance of a resumption later this month of the country’s suspended premier
league.

In a statement echoing declarations on the eve of the mass
anti-government protests in 2011 that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, the
Ultras White Knights (UWK) -- the militant, highly politicized, well organized
and street battle hardened supporters of storied Cairo soccer club Al Zamalek
SC -- stressed that it was not a political organization irrespective of the political
leanings of its members. In 2011, UWK alongside its arch rival, Ultras Ahlawy,
the fan group of Zamalek competitor Al Ahli SC, stressed its non-political
nature but said its members were welcome to participate in the anti-Mubarak
protests.

UWK’s latest statement on Facebook came as many of its members
joined opponents of the armed forces and the military-backed civilian
government installed after the July 3 coup against Egypt’s first democratically
elected president, Mohammed Morsi, to march on Tahrir Square where Egyptians
where celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1973 war against
Israel. That war restored Egyptian military pride following the routing of
Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces and Israeli occupation of the Sinai, the
Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and laid the basis for
the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with the Jewish state.

Security forces used tear gas on Sunday to prevent the
ultras and anti-government demonstrators from reaching Tahrir. The Egyptian
health ministry said at least 28 people were killed and 83 wounded. Some 200
alleged Muslim Brothers were arrested.

UWK said it represented “the entire Egyptian people, with
some members who are supportive of the revolution and others who are against
it. The membership of many of our members in the Islamist current does not
trouble us …. We are not an organization with a specific ideology.”

The association of many UWK members with the Islamist
movement indicates the degree to which the club’s fan base has evolved from the
first half of the last century when Zamalek was closely aligned with the former
British colonial authority, the monarchy that was overthrown in 1952 by Gamal
Abdel Nasser, and Egypt’s upper classes. Its rivalry with Al Ahli is rooted in
the fact that Ahli was founded in 1907 as the club of the nationalists and
republicans.

UWK leaders said they had issued the statement to counter efforts
to undermine their credibility by identifying them as a group with Mr. Morsi
and his Muslim Brotherhood. Their statement came amid a campaign in
pro-military and pro-government media asserting that the ultras, who pride
themselves on their financial independence, were financially beholden to
political interests. The UWK like other Egyptian ultras as well as their
counterparts in other parts of the world position themselves as not political
despite their ant-authoritarian bent and hostility to law enforcement in a bid
to reduce their vulnerability.

The UWK insisted that its focus was support for its club.
Their militant support led to years of confrontation with security forces in
the stadia during the Mubarak era in what amounted to a battle for control of
the pitch in a country that sought to control all pubic space. The UWK and
other ultra groups constituted the only group that challenged the government’s
right to control public spaces. They did so in the belief that as the only true
supporters of the club – they see players as hired guns and managers as corrupt
pawns of the regime – they were the real owners of the stadia. “We were confronted
by repressive regimes just because we dreamt about living,” UWK said. It said
its “battle for survival… (was) our motivation for chanting for freedom.”

The group charged that the military and the government were
cloaking themselves in the mantle of the 2011 revolution to justify another
round of repression. The military has arrested some 2,000 Muslim Brother,
including much of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership among whom Mr. Morsi, who
faces multiple charges and closed down pro-Brotherhood media. At least 1,000
people have been killed since early July in the military’s suppression of the
group.

The UWK said it was not intimidated by last month’s death of
18-year-old UWK member Amr Hussein who was killed by security forces when the
group tried to storm the Zamalek club’s headquarters in support of its demand
that club president Mahmoud Abbas resign. “Bloodshed will not deter us,” the
UWK said. The group vowed earlier to avenge Mr. Hussein’s death. The ultras’
influence is visible the music and chants the pro-Morsi protesters have adopted
in recent weeks.

“Nothing has changed, we’re still the terrorists we were
before the revolution...we are still demanding what is right and fighting for
it, laying down our own lives to fight some ignorant people, for whom
suppression is a way of life and whose imagination is sick. Amr Hussein, we
restore your rights or die like you,” the group said, in a reference to the
Mubarak regime’s attempt to criminalize them.

Implicitly the UWK was also referring to the death of 74
Ultras Ahlawy members in a politically loaded brawl in Port Said in February
2012. The brawl was widely seen as an attempt by the security forces and the
military which at the time was in government to teach the ultras a lesson not
only because of their key role in the toppling of Mr. Mubarak but also their subsequent
opposition to the military.

“It doesn't matter how hard they hit us. We have been steeled
in resisting repression and abuse. We have demonstrated our resolve,” a UWK
member said.

James M. Dorsey
is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer
blog.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

State-owned Qatari television network Al Jazeera prides
itself on hard hitting, let-the chips-fall-where-they fall reporting. Yet, it
has systematically avoided in recent days the one story that potentially could affect
the very future, shape and security of the wealthy Gulf state: controversy over
the timing of the 2022 World Cup and mounting criticism of living and working
conditions of up to a million unskilled and semi-skilled workers expected to
build infrastructure for the tournament.

That controversy could come to a head when the executive
committee of world soccer body FIFA meets later this week to discuss the Qatari
World Cup. Media reporting on and trade union agitation against often appalling
conditions for foreign workers expected to be involved in the construction of tens
of billions of dollars of infrastructure related to the tournament in a country
in which local nationals constitute at best 15 percent of the total population
and six percent of the workforce is likely to force FIFA to go beyond its
initial focus: whether to move the competition from summer to winter because of
Qatar’s searing summer temperatures that exceed 40 degrees Celsius.

Failure to address labor conditions in Qatar, involving both
material issues such as a mounting number of work-related deaths, confiscation
of passports and lack of access to basic amenities including drinking water as
well as the onerous kafala or sponsorship system that makes workers beholden to
their employees would open FIFA to allegations that it cares only about the
welfare of several hundred players at the expense of hundreds of thousands
creating the infrastructure they need.

British newspaper The Guardian reported this week that 70
Nepalese laborers had died in work-related incidents in the last 18 months. Other
media reports said a further 159 Indian workers had also died since the
beginning of this year. Narinra Bad, a representative of the Nepalese community
in the Middle East, which accounts for the largest contingent of construction
workers in Qatar, said however that only 15 Nepalese nationals had died since
the beginning of this year, some of them of natural causes. Qatari officials also
insisted that the numbers in media reports were exaggerated.

Nepalese trade union officials attributed many of the deaths
to falls because workers had not been given proper safety equipment.
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) secretary general added that “scores
are dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration after 12-hour shifts in blazing
heat, often during the night in the squalid and cramped labor camps with no
ventilation and appalling hygiene.”

Qatar’s problems were further compounded by an embarrassing salary
dispute between French-Algerian international Zahir Belounis and Qatari army
club Al Jaish that threatens to ruin the player’s career. Authorities have
refused to allow Mr. Belounis to leave the country for some 18 months in line
with the kafala system unless he first drops a legal case against the club.

The avalanche of negative reporting has aggravated FIFA’s
dilemma. As the group sought to buy time by indicating that it would delay a decision
on the timing of the Qatar tournament rather resolving the issue at this week’s
executive committee meeting, FIFA ethics investigator Michael J. Garcia prepared
to tour the nine countries that competed for the 2018 and 2002 World Cups. Some
sources said they feared Mr. Garcia, a former New York prosecutor, may be
intending to build a case against Qatar. Qatar has repeatedly denied any
wrongdoing in its bid that was far better funded than that of its competitors. In
a column published on the website of Al Jazeera English and Insideworldfootball,
London-based journalist Lee Wellings asked: “Is ‘Open Season’ on Qatar fair?”

FIFA vice president Jim Boyce told Reuters in a telephone interview:
“We don't need to rush into this. The World Cup is still nine years away, we
have plenty of time. But we also need to look very closely at the conditions of
the immigrant workers who are building the infrastructure in Qatar and will be
building the stadiums there for the World Cup. I was appalled and upset after
last week's stories that dozens of immigrant workers had died as a result of
the conditions in Qatar and that thousands of others are being ill-treated. We
cannot allow that. These people must be protected and their basic human rights
safeguarded."

What Qatar had expected to be a celebrated achievement in
its projection of soft power when it won the World Cup hosting rights almost
three years ago has turned into a public relations fiasco that spotlights
existential questions about Qatar’s political and social system, its
demographic viability and the sustainability of its national identity. Al
Jazeera’s avoidance of the issue spotlights the fact that the fiasco is one of Qatar’s
own making.

Al Jazeera’s lack of reporting goes far beyond restrictions
on media in an autocratic state. It highlights the fact that Qataris remain
hesitant to publicly engage their critics in a bid to demonstrate the fact that
they take at least some of the criticism seriously and to explain issues that
are in many ways unique to the region’s smaller family-run states. Qataris are
learning the hard way that their failure to engage amounted to surrender of the
battlefield to their opponents and more fundamentally that winning the right to
host the World Cup enhanced their prestige but also exposed their warts and gave
leverage to activists campaigning for a plethora of rights, including those of
workers.

The Al Jazeera avoidance of a for Qataris sensitive issue
further focuses attention on the problems smaller Gulf states have as they try
to get a grip on a world in which technology and social media impose greater openness,
public lack of confidence in institutions and leaders has toppled governments
and the need to project soft power as part of a nation’s security and defense
policy forces them to confront painful and existential issues.

First and foremost among these are foreign workers’ rights in
a part of the world that traditionally strives to ensure that non-nationals were
welcome to fulfill their contracts but would be prevented from gaining a stake
in society. In responding to criticism by human rights and labor activists,
Qatar has gone beyond issuing lofty statements of principle in a bid to address
material concerns and fend off political demands, including abolishment of the kafala
system and the granting of the right to form independent trade unions and
bargain collectively.

To be sure, deflecting political issues is part autocratic
reflex. It is however also a function of problems for which there are no easy
solutions. Ray Jureidini, a sociologist and migration expert at Beirut’s
Lebanese American University, who advised the Qatar Foundation on establishing
standards for the full cycle of a foreign worker’s employment in Qatar,
including recruitment, deployment, working and living conditions and return to
country of origin, notes that abolishing of the kafala system would amount to a
significant overhaul of the Qatari economy.

“The kafala system exists as part of an effort by Qataris to
retain control of their country. Abolishing the system means opening up a labor
market in a country where there is no labor market. The requirement for an exit
visa is partly the result of Qatar not having extradition treaties with a lot
of countries and wanting to prevent those who break the law from simply
skipping the country,” Mr. Jureidini says.

The Australian-Lebanese scholar concedes that Qatar would do
itself a favor by publicly acknowledging the issues it faces rather than by
remaining silent projecting the notion of a nation that cruelly implements a
system denounced by activists as modern slavery. The same is true of the reluctance
by various Qatari institutions to freely discuss the details of steps they have
or are taking to improve workers’ conditions including ensuring that workers do
not pay for their recruitment – a key issue with vast numbers of laborers
indebted for years to corrupt and unethical middlemen who arrange for their
employment.

To be sure, Qatari’s existential issues do not justify harsh
working and living conditions as reported by The Guardian recently. Yet,
putting on the table the issues involved in resolving an intolerable situation
would put the issue in perspective and allow the Gulf state to work with its
critics in finding mutually acceptable solutions.

Qatari labor and social affairs minister Abdullah Saleh Al
Khulaifi, in a rare instance of self-criticism, implicitly acknowledged that
his government had been lax in implementing laws and regulations that human
rights activists privately recognize afford workers significant protections.
They include a ban on confiscation of workers’ passports after completion of
immigration procedures, strict regulation of on-time payment of wages and
working hours in periods of extreme heat, and guaranteed access to drinking
water and proper healthcare.

Mr. Khulaifi said his ministry would increase the number of
inspectors checking that companies are compliant with labor laws regarding
healthcare, safety, living conditions and salaries; hire more translators to communicate
with foreign workers; and establish branch offices in areas where foreign
workers live.

Qatar has by and large been equally uncommunicative about
the fact that criticism of its labor system since it won the World Cup has
sparked internal debate. On the one hand, a recent study by the Social and
Economic Survey Research Institute of Qatar University concluded that nine out
of 10 Qataris favor kafala and that some 30 percent would like to see the
system strengthened. Many Qataris, on the other hand, acknowledge privately that
their country’s labor system is in desperate need of reform. Kafala, moreover,
is disliked not only by employees but also by many employers because it makes
them liable for whatever the worker does during and outside of working hours.

Qatar like the UAE has taken its first baby steps in
nibbling at the edges of an issues that invokes fear of loss of identity and a
national existence of one’s own. In a break with the tradition of ensuring that
foreigners remain aware of the fact that their presence is temporary and
conditional with no prospect of ever having a strong bond to or stake in Qatari
society, Qatar Stars League (QSL) earlier this year organized its first ever
soccer competition for 16 teams made up of foreign workers. It is looking at
creating an annual league for 32 such clubs. A Qatari sociologist went a step further,
calling on Qatari sports clubs to open branches in areas where foreign workers
live and scouting for talent in the labor community.

The significance of the move lies in the fact that soccer
rivals religion in the Middle East and North Africa in the degree of
deep-seated passion and identity that it evokes. In a city like Cairo prior to
the toppling in 2011 of President Hosni Mubarak one was asked whether one was
Zamalek or Ahli, the city’s two storied soccer clubs, rather than where one was
from. As a result of the often almost tribal emotions that the game sparks, Gulf
clubs preferred to play in empty stadia rather than cater to the majority
foreign population and risk their development of an emotional tie to their
country of temporary residence.

In a rare public discussion of demography by a Gulf
national, Sharjah intellectual and businessmen Sultan Sooud al Qassemi said in
a recent Gulf News article that “the fear of naturalization is that Emiratis
would lose their national identity; we are after all a shrinking minority in
our own country. However, UAE national identity has proven to be more resilient
and adaptive to the changing environment and times than some may believe.”

Noting that the UAE had taken a first step, by granting the
offspring of mixed Emirati-non-Emirati nationals

the right to citizenship, Al
Qassemi pointed out that Saudi Arabia, the one country in which local nationals
constitute a majority, if only a small one, was the only country in the region
to have legalized procedures for naturalization. Mr. Al Qassemi went however a
step further noting that the success of the United States was in no small part
due to the contribution of immigrants.

“Perhaps it is time to consider a path to citizenship for
them that will open the door to entrepreneurs, scientists, academics and other
hardworking individuals who have come to support and care for the country as
though it was their own,” Mr. Al Qassemi said.

James M. Dorsey
is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer
blog.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile